Writing novels and blogging from my recliner or aboard the boat. Writing is what I want to do, and writing about it is what I love to do.

Monthly Archives: August 2019

I just had the most amazing experience–listening to one of my own books narrated by a woman who got all the subtle nuances just right. If I’d been asked to narrate Forbidden Dreams, the story of Shell Landry and Jase O’Keefe, I couldn’t have done it better than Darlene Roberts. Correction–I couldn’t have done it as well as Darlene.

When Jason O’Keefe blows in on a wicked, west-coast storm, bloody and battered and looking oddly familiar, Shell Landry is intrigued but wary. She has good reason for both reactions, the first is the secret she must protect, the second, her instant attraction to him. When he explains that they did meet years ago and far away as children, her wariness grows, turning nearly to panic. Why has he come? What does he know? What will he do if he learns her secret?

Shell has knowledge that must be kept from any stranger, a secret she has held for most of her life, information which, if revealed, could destroy a person she holds very dear. Jase poses a distinct threat to the sanctity of that confidentiality, but when he reveals his reason for coming to her, not by accident as she thought, but because he needs her help, she is torn. If she doesn’t do as he asks, someone else she loves could be harmed. But still, Shell must walk a careful line.

In contrast to Shell’s reticence Jase finds himself unwillingly revealing a great deal about himself as he tries to convince her to do something she clearly feels is wrong. But the need for immediate action is great. It is so urgent that he presses hard, citing reason after reason, all valid, why he needs her assistance. When she finally agrees, Jase knows that should be the end of it. He’s accomplished what he came for. It’s time to leave. But… He’s as intrigued as she was, and more deeply attracted than he thought possible.

When, after providing him with the help he’d come for, Shell learns exactly who and what Jase is, she finally understands the familiarity she sensed in the beginning. It had nothing to do with their distant, childhood connections and his deliberate seduction was a result only of his greed. Feeling betrayed, she breaks off all contact with him. But, had he seduced her, or had they seduced each other? She’s forced to recognize she’d wanted him as much as he wanted her. As her misery grows so do her doubts. Has he actually perpetrated any of the cruelties she suspects him of, or… has he only told the truth, which is what he always claimed? Worse, though, are her doubts about herself.

Who, exactly, has she been protecting all these years? Whose fears have guided her every action? If the answer is “her own”, then she clearly has to admit it because, unless she can forgive him—and herself—for keeping secrets, the love she’s long dreamed of will continue to be forbidden.